Princess Diana Was Warned ‘This Is Your Last Night of Freedom’ Ever Before She Married Prince Charles
Once upon a time, a British prince married a young beautiful woman and the world thought they were going to live happily ever after. But that isn’t how things turned out.
Because of the book Diana: Her True Story written by Andrew Morton in 1992, we know that Prince Charles and Princess Diana experienced trouble in their marriage right from the start. Diana was even warned about never having any freedom again before she and the Prince of Wales tied the knot.
Princess Diana and Charles weren’t thrilled about getting married
Given what we know now, it’s widely believed that Charles didn’t marry Diana for love. At the age of 32, the heir apparent was under immense pressure to get married and start a family. Lady Diana Spencer was considered a suitable bride for the heir apparent so once he started seeing her his father, Prince Philip, told him to either “marry her or release her.”
Charles decided to propose to the woman he had only met a dozen times but after popping the question he had second thoughts.
“I desperately wanted to get out of the wedding in 1981, when during the engagement I discovered just how awful the prospects were having had no chance whatsoever to get to know Diana beforehand,” Charles reportedly told biographer Robert Jobson, who authored the book Charles At Seventy: Thoughts, Hopes And Dreams.
Diana wasn’t crazy about the idea either and in her audio recordings for the documentary Diana: In Her Own Words, the princess is heard telling her sisters that she didn’t know if she could go through with the wedding.
Despite their doubts, the pair ended up saying “I do,” on July 29, 1981.
Prior to the wedding, Diana was told it was her ‘last night of freedom’
In her tapes to Morton, Diana revealed that she was warned she would lose her freedom forever as soon as her engagement to Prince Charles was announced.
“The night before the engagement announcement, which took place on February 24, 1981, she packed a bag, hugged her loyal friends, and left Coleherne Court forever,” Morton wrote. “She had an armed Scotland Yard bodyguard for company, Chief Inspector Paul Officer, a philosophical policeman who is fascinated by runes, mysticism, and the after-world. As she prepared to say goodbye to her private life, he told her: ‘I just want you to know that this is the last night of freedom in your life so make the most of it.’ Those words stopped her in her tracks.”
Morton noted that Diana had said the words “felt like a sword through my heart.”
What Diana learned about Camilla right before tying the knot
Diana received another surprise before the wedding when she learned Charles was still involved with Camilla Parker Bowles even though he was about to marry her. The princess explained just how she discovered that her soon-to-be husband was still seeing his former flame.
“Someone in his office told me that my husband has had a bracelet made for her,” Diana said (per The Mirror). “I walked into this man’s office one day and I said, ‘Ooh, what’s in that parcel?’ And he said ‘Oh, you shouldn’t look at that’. So I opened it and there was the bracelet … I was devastated, and I said ‘Well, he’s going to give it to her tonight.”
The bracelet was engraved with the letters “G” and “F,” which stood for “Gladys” and “Fred” — the nicknames Charles and Camilla had given one another.
Diana confronted the prince and that led to a huge fight. She attributed staying with him to her being so “immature.”
